Does anyone miss the idea of Soul Burn in Legion?

[PickleballAce]

Instead of spamming the idea in the three different Legion class threads I figured I'd just make a new one. This isn't about Soulburn: Haunt (bye Felicia), just the Soulburn spell.

The return of Soul Shards to all three specs in Legion also coincides with the removal of a key related spell: Soulburn. If you've already forgotten what Soulburn does, it consumes a Soul Shard, and in return it empowers the next spell cast with some form of added utility (only a few spells left on Live gain any kind of empowerment). Mostly it is just used as part of the Soulburn: Haunt priority list.

The benefit of Soulburn is that it exchanges some throughput for increased utility in one form or another, which is a mechanic that Blizzard has seemed to like (Destruction on Live exchanging a Chaos Bolt for an Ember Tap, Ret using Holy Power on Word of Glory rather than Templar's Verdicts, etc.).

With that in mind, I propose not just a return of Soulburn in Legion, but an expansion of its usefulness. Since we're no longer limited to just one spec using Soul Shards, it would be work that all three specs could benefit from. Without wasting any more bandwidth, here's my list of possible Soulburn uses:


Class-wide Soulburn effects:

Soulburn + Fear = Removes all Damage over Time effects from the target.
[or merely all of the Warlock's Damage over Time effects.]

Soulburn + Health Funnel = Health Funnel is no longer channelled, but leaves a 20 second Heal over Time effect on the targeted Demon.
OR
Soulburn + Health Funnel = Health Funnel can be cast on other players at reduced efficiency.

Soulburn + Summon Demon = Makes your Summon Demon spell instant cast.
OR
Soulburn + Summon Demon = Reduces the cast time on your Summon Demon spell by 3 seconds.
[Return Summon Demon spells to their current baseline of 5 seconds with no innate Soul Shard cost.]

Soulburn + Eye of Kilrogg = Increases the movement speed of your Eye of Kilrogg by X%.
OR
Soulburn + Eye of Kilrogg = Your Eye of Kilrogg can now melee enemy targets.

Soulburn + Drain Life = Increases healing done by your next Drain Life by X%.
OR
Soulburn+ Drain Life = Drain Life instead creates an absorption shield based on the amount it would have normally healed.
[Somewhat redundant with Affliction's Soul Leech effect.]

Soulburn + Life Tap = Reduces damage taken by X% for 5 seconds.
[Redundant with Life Tap damage reduction Artifact trait.]
OR
Soulburn + Life Tap = Life Tap no longer consumes health, but instead absorbs X amount of total healing received for 30 seconds. This effect stacks.
[Copy of current Glyph of Life Tap.]

Soulburn + Soulstone = Your Soulstone cast is instant.
OR
Soulburn + Soulstone = The target of Soulstone is returned to life with 100 percent health and mana.
[Copy of current Glyph of Soulstone.]

Soulburn + Unending Breath = Unending Breath allows the target to walk on water.
OR
Soulburn + Unending Breath = Increases swim speed by X%.
[Copy of current Glyph of Unending Breath.]

Soulburn + Banish = The duration of Banish is doubled.
OR
Soulburn + Banish = Banish is no longer limited to Demons, Abberations and Elementals.

Soulburn + Unending Resolve = Damage reduction of Unending Resolve increased by 10 percent and duration increased by 2 seconds.


Affliction specific Soulburn effects:

Soulburn + Seed of Corruption = Your Seed of Corruption detonation effect will afflict Corruption on all enemy targets.
[Seed of Corruption would no longer spread Corruption as a baseline effect in Legion, probably not a popular idea now.]
OR
Soulburn + Seed of Corruption = The radius and damage of your Seed of Corruption detonation is increased by X%.


Demonology specific Soulburn effects:

???

Destruction specific Soulburn effects:

Soulburn + Rain of Fire = All targets struck by Rain of Fire will be Immolated.
OR
Soulburn + Rain of Fire = Radius and damage of Rain of Fire increased by X%.
[Rain of Fire no longer costs Soul Shards baseline. Or maybe we can just get real Fire and Brimstone back with Soulburn Immolate and Soulburn Incinerate?]

Anybody want to see this spell return in Legion or are we all happy for the keybinding space? I'd love to see more utility ideas if people are interested. I know the frequency with which Demonology can gain Soul Shards kind of throws things for a loop.

[Gaidax]

God no, one of the good changes in Legion is that this piece of shit gets eliminated.

[PickleballAce]

God no, one of the good changes in Legion is that this piece of shit gets eliminated.

Curious what exactly you don't like about Soulburn empowerments other than Soulburn: Haunt? The instant demon summon in particular is rather nice and will be missed. Not to mention the ability to kill other people with a sudden unexpected waterwalking buff.

[Baconeggcheese]

Eh I liked the spell but I'm not particularly gonna miss it.

Just a bunch of extra modifiers blizzard has to deal with which is meh.

[Gaidax]

Because everything it did should have been baseline to begin with. It was just an extra layer of bullshit for the sake of having seemingly rewarding mechanic, which in reality was really limited.

[PickleballAce]

Because everything it did should have been baseline to begin with. It was just an extra layer of bullshit for the sake of having seemingly rewarding mechanic, which in reality was really limited.

Fair enough, though I do think expecting some of the empowerments to be baseline was asking a bit much without some opportunity cost to pay.

[Baconeggcheese]

Curious what exactly you don't like about Soulburn empowerments other than Soulburn: Haunt? The instant demon summon in particular is rather nice and will be missed. Not to mention the ability to kill other people with a sudden unexpected waterwalking buff.

It's just doubling the amount of potential things you had to account for on certain spells which made the kit that much more complex. It's a lot like current meta having our spells have 2 different versions you have to account for.

Which is fun or neutral for the more experienced of us, but confusing to newer / less experienced players. It was needless complexity, wasn't all that attached to it.

[Fabinas]

No. /10char

[Deleted]

I quite liked the idea, but more the complexity going on in the background, as Baconeggcheese said so. It was quite fun to know what all was and what the heck I may do, but in the end you quite often only used 2-3 empowerd versions of the spells.

But yeah I will miss it, as I will miss Meta. But thats another slice of bread.

[Grizelda]

It has a nice animation but that's all I can really say for it.

[Xanatas]

I miss soul burn for istant cast... soul burn+chaos bolt will be nice

[xuros]

Not that I'll miss it...I think it will take me a bit to get used to not hitting my G6 key to get Soulburn rolling before boss pulls lol. Its been programed into my muscle memory as of now.

[Kadria]

I won't miss it at all. I like they are just implementing shards into spells so they are used on the fly. One less button to push or macro and time for other useful things.

[Lisa Frank Succubus]

God no and no offense but I hate your ideas.

[PickleballAce]

Yeah, upon further reflection I can see why it's unpopular and they're removing it along with Fire and Brimstone as we currently know it. It looks like the idea of spell modifiers is just too complex for a lot of the community.

[Kadria]

It's not that it's too complex, it's that it becomes tedious when it becomes of your management and priority system to have to press it each time for things. Modifiers can be built into spells with talents so we can keep our focus on mechanics which I bet they will be focusing more on.

[PickleballAce]

It's not that it's too complex, it's that it becomes tedious when it becomes of your management and priority system to have to press it each time for things. Modifiers can be built into spells with talents so we can keep our focus on mechanics which I bet they will be focusing more on.

To be fair, if you eliminate the AoE applications, the Soul Burn effects in the first post would purely be utility rather than having anything to do with any DPS priority (often utility that other classes get baseline like instant summoning and instant brez). There's no management involved.

It looks like tooltips and flashing spell alerts just don't do a good job of communicating to the playerbase, which is fine.

[Deleted]

I will, but my RL won't...

[Deleted]

biggest problem with soulburn was that it had very few applications in pve, you were never conflicted about what you should use your shards on. what i would have loved was if there were some choices for like soulburn+malefic grasp or soulburn+corruption etc. soulburn had a lot of potential to give afflic a lot of depth but it was so poorly utilized by blizzard that it shouldnt have been in the game in the first place tbh.

[bio347]

To be fair, if you eliminate the AoE applications, the Soul Burn effects in the first post would purely be utility rather than having anything to do with any DPS priority (often utility that other classes get baseline like instant summoning and instant brez). There's no management involved.

Soulburn as pure utility will never work out as long as it consumes a Soul Shard. We learned this as far back as Cataclysm, actually.

In combat, if you have a Shard spender that does damage (or amplifies it or otherwise increases DPS) it will take 100% precedence over any Shard spender that does no damage unless the latter is overwhelmingly powerful in effect. And maybe not even then.

Out of combat, spending a Shard to generate an effect is essentially a worthless gesture. You'll probably wait for it to regenerate before you attack anything anyway. At that point, why not just make the effect baseline or its own discrete spell?